


Eat The Sorrow, Lick The Spark

by Zee



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Drug Dealing, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, poor class attendance, various dirtbaggy hijinks that don't fit an exact tag, violations of university rules
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 06:29:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12906123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zee/pseuds/Zee
Summary: When Ronan turned and elbowed his way through the throngs of people in the living room to get out of the house and away from the party crowd, he found the boy somehow already on the front porch, waiting for him.“Hey beautiful,” he said, his voice like the smooth side of a glass shard. If you dragged your thumb down it the wrong way it would slice you open. “You like it rough too, huh?”





	Eat The Sorrow, Lick The Spark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neerdowellwolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neerdowellwolf/gifts).



> Written as a commission for neerdowellwolf! Thank you so much for nudging me to revisit TRC and finally write this pairing, I really had a blast with this and I hope you like it. <3
> 
> \--
> 
> Kavinsky's personality and outlook on life departs somewhat from canon in this, I feel like I sort of wrote my version of him rather than MStief's. Sorry not sorry! Also the university they are going to is fictional, because I could not for the life of me imagine any real college where Ronan, Kavinsky and Gansey would all be attending.
> 
> So much thanks to marbleflan for the beta and encouragement, and also for the song title, which is from "Bloodbeat" by Patrick Wolf.

Ronan met Joseph Kavinsky at a party. Where else could they have met but at a party? He wasn’t the kind of person you might meet in class, or while getting coffee or studying on the quad. Kavinsky’s appearances weren’t strictly limited to gatherings of young people getting wasted, but it was at these times that he was most open to introductions.

Ronan didn’t want to be at this party. Nothing new there; he had yet to enjoy any of the college parties that Gansey had dragged him to. In his first semester Ronan had gone to plenty, always easily lured by the promise of alcohol and possible destruction. But he always left in disgust early in the night, reminded that he didn’t have enough patience with his fellow students to wait for any potential chaos to bloom.

It was well into spring semester now and Ronan had refused all of Gansey’s requests for party company up to now. He had only accepted tonight because he could tell that Gansey expected him to say no, and the distant look in his eyes made Ronan suspect that at the time of the invitation, he was already mentally rehearsing how he might invite his new friend, Adam, to go in Ronan’s stead. This, of course, pissed Ronan off.

So now he was here making himself miserable out of spite. Anywhere that didn’t smell like spilled beer smelled like rum and coke. Halloween and Christmas were both long gone, but decorations from both were scattered across the several different staging grounds of the party, Ronan guessed in an attempt at irony. There was a DJ and a dance floor, and the music at least was Ronan’s kind of music. The bass vibration hitting the back of his teeth was the only sensation here that he liked.

Ronan had left Gansey in the backyard, talking with some film student whose presence had grated on Ronan unbearably. Now that he was inside and alone, snarling on the edges of the most crowded rooms and shoving back whenever anyone bumped into him, he half-wished he was outside again where there was at least room to breathe. But then he’d see Gansey perfectly happy in his absence, deep in conversation about whatever bullshit artsy topics you conversed about with film majors. That wasn’t any more tolerable than the sea of horny kids swarming around him, ostensibly grinding to the beat and sloshing alcohol everywhere. 

Ronan drained the last of his beer and tossed his empty solo cup to the floor, smiling when a shirtless boy with skinny shoulders stumbled on it, the red plastic crunching agreeably. His smile widened into a grin when the kid swayed into a larger boy who reacted negatively, causing a chain reaction of shoves and glares and drunken threats. There was real promise now of the kind of trouble Ronan always yearned for. 

There was a hypnotic rhythm to the room’s movement now, and the yells and sounds of people hurting each other in that muffled, upper-class, safe college sort of way fit the beat better than their dancing had. A boy was thrown directly into Ronan’s chest, slamming him back into the sharp edge of some bulky thing hanging on the wall. Ronan grabbed the boy, turned him around to face the crowd again, and tossed him back into the impromptu mosh pit. 

Ronan’s back throbbed dully. He looked behind him, and saw that an unstringed, painted ukulele was the culprit, now dented and smashed from Ronan’s bulk. He started to laugh, and when he turned back around he saw that the boy with skinny shoulders, the one who’d started all this, was looking right at him. He stood at the edge of the room now, outside of the mob, and the grin splitting his face was the mirror image of Ronan’s own.

They knew each other. Ronan had never seen his face before tonight. But they knew each other.

This knowing hit Ronan in a way he couldn’t begin to understand, which made him angry. The boy just laughed when Ronan’s happy expression turned to a glare, and when Ronan turned and elbowed his way through the throngs of people in the living room to get out of the house, he found the boy somehow already on the front porch, waiting for him.

“Hey beautiful,” he said, his voice like the smooth side of a glass shard. If you dragged your thumb down it the wrong way it would slice you open. “You like it rough too, huh?”

Ronan wanted to grab this guy and shove him up against the window, preferably through the window. But he was still shirtless and Ronan didn’t want to touch his bare skin. Also, the satisfied look this guy was giving him said that he expected a fight. Ronan didn’t like giving people what they wanted.

“Not me,” he said. “I like the peace and quiet. Vanilla stuff.” He met the answering leer with the blankest look he had, crossing his arms over his chest. This brought a manic giggle out of the shirtless guy, who in the porch light looked entirely different from before. When he’d stumbled over Ronan’s solo cup, this guy had seemed spectacularly vacant, stoned well outside his body. But the person in front of Ronan now was eerily present and alive, the lines of his body wiry and taut and focused on Ronan. 

“Kavinsky.” He made a motion and for a second Ronan thought he was going to be presented with a handshake, but then Kavinsky kept listing forward until he was up in Ronan’s face, his palm pressed to the wall behind Ronan’s head. From this close Ronan could see how red and raw his nostrils were, his bloodshot eyes, his blown pupils. High as hell. 

Ronan should shove him off. Ronan should spit in his face. But he was caught here, all the blood in his body pounding in his eardrums, neither breathing nor blinking. 

Kavinsky grinned, and instead of doing any of the many things that Ronan hadn’t quite gotten around to dreading, he held up a dime bag that held two pill capsules. Light blue. “Joseph.”

It wasn’t clear whether Kavinsky was offering up the drugs or if they were simply another part of his introduction, the second half of his byline. For some reason Ronan found himself distracted by the oddly graceful shape of Kavinsky’s long fingers where they clasped the edge of the plastic bag. Ronan blinked, his focus shifting back to the features of Kavinsky’s face, none of which could ever be described as graceful.

Ronan slid his hands into his pockets, layering cold disinterest over the way he wanted to shiver and swallow. “You’re in my personal space, man.” 

Kavinsky did not move out of his personal space. He tilted his head sideways, hawklike. “In polite society it’s good manners to say your own name back, man.”

Now Ronan did shove him off, the heel of his palm smacking against Kavinsky’s brittle-looking clavicle. Kavinsky didn’t push it, and Ronan shouldered past him, off the porch and out into the street.

“See you around, Lynch,” Kavinsky called out at Ronan’s scornful back. Ronan raised his middle finger and did not turn around or pause at the revelation that Kavinsky had already known who he was. He had felt that sharp jolt of recognition upon meeting Kavinsky’s eyes, and he didn’t like knowing that this abrupt knowledge hadn’t been mutual, because Kavinsky had apparently known him--or known of him--before tonight. Unease churned in his stomach.

***

Gansey knew of Ronan’s conversation with Kavinsky without being told of it, and he knew far more about Kavinsky than Ronan did. This made some sense, considering that Gansey actually talked to people. He had lingered at that party for hours after Ronan had left to drink by himself in a cold, forgotten corner of campus. Yet somehow he still managed to be up first, awake and smartly put together and reading the newspaper in the shared living room suite of their dorm room when Ronan finally managed to crawl out into the hated daylight. 

When he saw Ronan emerge, Gansey lowered his newspaper and frowned, fitting perfectly the image of some strict father from a ‘50s sitcom. He strengthened this impression when he opened his mouth. 

Talking about Kavinsky, it turned out, brought forth Ronan’s least favorite Gansey, disapproving and fastidious and somehow so far away from Ronan’s world that he wondered if the gulf between them might become uncrossable. Sometimes this thought was one of the crowd of things keeping Ronan awake at night. Right now it was just annoying. 

“Did he try to give you anything? Tad told me he saw him giving you something.” Gansey’s teeth worried briefly at a cuticle while he eyed Ronan. Ronan glared back, arms crossed over his chest while he leaned against the doorframe to his room. He hated this tableau; he’d grown too used to it since they started college. And right now he had microscopic cracks spidering out behind his eyeballs, splintering his skull piece by wretched piece. He needed an advil. 

“I don’t know who the fuck Tad is, but sounds like he’s seen too many D.A.R.E. videos.”

Gansey frowned at him. “He _is_ a drug dealer, you know. It’s no kind of secret.”

“Who cares?” Ronan threw himself down on the couch opposite Gansey, taking a moment to hate the scratchy, uncomfortable college dorm furniture. It always made him long for home, for the lavish leather couch that had been in the Barns’ living room for as long as Ronan could remember. Everything that Niall had collected for their home was expensive and special and old. Ronan wondered if all those antiques were still there, collecting dust in a house that might never be theirs again, or if lawyers had convinced Declan to sell most of it by now. Maybe Declan had sold their furniture just to pay the legal fees.

Gansey blew out a breath through pursed lips. “I don’t mean just Adderall. Apparently he makes his own awful creations. I heard he wound up in the hospital over winter break from taking something he designed himself.”

Ronan laughed. “Isn’t that better than sending someone else to the hospital?”

“No doubt he’s done that as well. Look, it’s your business who you hang out with--”

“Obviously it isn’t.”

“--but I’m just saying.” Gansey looked slightly hurt at Ronan’s interjection. “Some people at the party claimed you two left together, but I figured that was probably just a rumor. It might be a rumor he started, though.”

Ronan opened his mouth to say ‘why the fuck’ and then stopped. Maybe he didn’t want to ask ‘why’ in regards to Kavinsky’s behavior towards him. 

“He was high as a kite,” Ronan scoffed instead. “Probably doesn’t even remember anything this morning.”

“I’m not sure that’s how cocaine works.” Gansey stayed quiet for a few moments, possibly to give serious consideration to the question of memory-altering effects of different drug classifications. Then he shrugged. 

“Well, it’s not as if you have classes with him, I suppose.” Gansey shook his head slightly as if marveling at the notion of Kavinsky having classes at all. Ronan had to admit it was a surreal image for him as well; last night he hadn’t even been sure if Kavinsky was a college student at all, had thought that perhaps he was a townie someone had invited. “Shall we get breakfast?”

The subject of Kavinsky was dropped, and Ronan’s least favorite version of Gansey didn’t make any appearances for the rest of the day. Ronan was relieved by this, and further pleased when Gansey spent the rest of the weekend either with Ronan or at crew practice, for once not mentioning homework dates with Adam or experimental diner adventures in town with Blue. He did keep peeking at his phone for new texts, but Ronan could ignore that.

And Ronan could put Kavinsky out of his mind. He didn’t think about him again, at least not in words. More than once the image of those slender fingers, rudely up in his face and sickly bone-white and yellow in the glare of midnight porch light, floated up from out of nowhere while Ronan’s conscious mind drifted. Like the disorienting aftereffect from a painfully bright camera flash.

***

Kavinsky found Ronan in class less than a week later. Through either chance or surveillance, he’d chosen one of the rare days that Ronan had actually deigned to show up for political science. He was even a few minutes early, slouched in the back row of the lecture hall with his feet propped up on the seat in front of him, playing a racing game on his phone when Kavinsky slid into the seat next to him.

“This is that vanilla stuff you like?” Kavinsky said by way of greeting.

Ronan didn’t look up and didn’t jump, even though Kavinsky had startled him. “What the fuck.”

Kavinsky’s body flowed into a posture that mimicked Ronan’s own, yet managed somehow to be even more disrespectful. Ronan’s classmates were all taking their seats, and some of them glanced at Kavinsky with expressions that ran the gamut from mistrustful to nervous to hostile. It would appear that they had the row to themselves. 

Kavinsky peered over Ronan’s shoulder at his game. One of those long fingers entered Ronan’s field of vision, then Kavinsky’s fingertip smeared a line over the phone screen, causing Ronan’s car to veer suddenly sidewise and explode against a wall. Game over.

“You should pay attention now that class is starting,” Kavinsky murmured in Ronan’s ear, diverting the spike of Ronan’s indignant rage from the ruined game to unwanted intimacy. Every muscle from Ronan’s chest to the tips of his ears tensed up. Kavinsky laughed.

“Touch my shit again and see what happens,” Ronan said, staring straight ahead where Professor Eddings was starting his lecture, wearing the same distant and tired smile he’d worn on all the occasions (three so far) Ronan had actually attended this class.

“Aw.” Kavinsky retreated somewhat, slumping back down in his own seat and flicking his glance forward with disinterest. “You like politics, huh? Guess you can never really know a person.”

Ronan didn’t bother to point out the obvious, that they didn’t know each other at all; Kavinsky’s sense of humor was strange, and didn’t make Ronan laugh. “Of course I don’t, shithead. This is just a requirement. You’re here on your own time, though. Gonna transfer in halfway through the semester?” 

Kavinsky shook his head. His white tank top was even more ragged than Ronan’s black one, and it showed more skin. If Ronan glanced his way he could see practically the whole plane of Kavinsky’s bony chest and most of his ribcage through the tattered wide arm hole. 

“Humanities aren’t really my thing. Chemistry major, you know?”

Ronan snorted, but Kavinsky didn’t punctuate the statement with any kind of smirk or laugh of his own, just gave Ronan a placid look. Ronan realized he wasn’t joking.

“Oh, come on,” Ronan said. “You’re a drug dealer and you’re majoring in chemistry? Seriously? Trying for a _Breaking Bad Goes to College_ spinoff?”

Kavinsky shrugged. “Hey man, I just do what I’m already good at, same as you. Why else would you major in fucking Latin?”

Ronan had no idea how or why Kavinsky knew so much about him, and he seethed. “Are you fucking stalking me?”

They were starting to get some dirty looks from other students in the next row. Ronan gave the seat in front of him a vicious kick, and the heads of his classmates swiveled forward again.

“I know everything about everyone in this place,” Kavinsky said, like Ronan had missed the obvious. Weirdly, Ronan was reminded of Gansey. “It’s just good business.”

“And that’s why you won’t leave me alone?” Ronan turned to face him finally, meeting Kavinsky’s eyes head-on. “Want me as a customer?”

Kavinsky held up under Ronan’s stare longer than most people did, but broke eye contact eventually, looking down at his hands. “You’ve seen too many D.A.R.E. videos.”

“Then what do you want?” The words were out before Ronan could think better of them, before he’d given them any thought at all. He hated his own tongue and he hated the shiny look that Kavinsky gave him now. His leer was so slow and dirty that Ronan half-expected Gansey to be immediately conjured to express his distaste.

“On second thought, I don’t care,” Ronan said when Kavinsky leaned in to reply. “If you get your rocks off listening to Eddings talk about checks and balances, be my guest. Just leave me the hell alone.” 

He folded his arms over his chest and slumped further down in his seat, starting up the game on his phone again. Kavinsky made a tutting sound.

“Didn’t realize we got off on that wrong a foot, man. What crawled up your ass and why do you think I put it there?”

Ronan could feel his cheeks trying to turn red. He clenched the fist of his left hand, on the side facing away from Kavinsky. Kavinsky had done nothing specific to earn hostility, of course, if you discounted Gansey’s warnings and the general look of him--but then, Ronan had the same look, and they’d both been laughing at that violence at the party. He could claim to be bothered by having drugs waved in his face, but that would open the door to more D.A.R.E. jokes, and besides, it would be a lie.

“I’m this friendly with everyone,” he said instead, which was more or less the truth. His car was starting up its race again, the professor’s lecture a soundtrack to the dashboard flying through pixels on the screen in his hand.

Now Kavinsky’s arm curved around the back of Ronan’s chair, their shoulders brushing. When Kavinsky spoke, Ronan felt the puff of his breath against his buzzed head. “Have little birdies been telling you things about me?”

Ronan stared at his phone without seeing it. “All kinds of things.”

“Yeah?” Kavinsky sounded pleased. “What’s my bad reputation, then? Share with the class.”

Ronan finally turned to look at him then. Kavinsky’s arm was still around his chair, practically hugging his shoulders. Familiar. He was smiling. 

What would happen, if Ronan accepted the strange camaraderie that this boy was trying to offer him? Where would it lead? Ronan felt like he was looking at a picture that had yet to be framed, one without boundaries, one whose shape he doubted. 

Ronan was no friend to doubt. He tucked his phone into his pocket and stood, looking down at Kavinsky.

“You know, I don’t remember. Nothing really stood out,” he said with a shrug, and stepped around Kavinsky’s legs as he walked out of the hall.

***

 

If Ronan had hoped, on some level, that his rejection of an outside friendship and stubborn loyalty to the two-person dynamic he’d entered college with would somehow ensure that Gansey would tire of his new friends as well, those subconscious hopes were soon dashed. Gansey wouldn’t be around their dorm this Friday because he was going with Blue and Adam to a student play, of all things. Apparently some of Blue’s friends were involved in the production. 

Gansey invited Ronan to come along, which just made it worse. Ronan was livid. He started to tell Gansey his extremely low opinion of theater, especially fucking student theater, in as much colorful detail as he could, but Gansey interrupted him.

“Oh come on, Ronan. How is it that much worse than any other form of entertainment? I remember you liking that production of _Macbeth_ we saw sophomore year.”

Ronan jumped to his feet from his lazy sprawl on the couch, shaking hands balled into fists. He had to spit every word around the spiked snarl of his anger and hurt. “Have fun watching a bunch of embarrassing drama nerds sucking each other’s dicks onstage. I’m out.”

Ronan remembered _Macbeth_. He’d probably liked it well enough. The Ronan Lynch of that era, before Niall’s death, had liked plenty of things well enough. 

They never talked about how things were before, the person Ronan had been before as opposed to now. It was a forbidden subject through mutual, silent agreement, even though Ronan knew that Gansey still felt pained by the shift in his personality, still hoped that the old Ronan would someday return. He had no idea why Gansey had so cavalierly brought up anything from sophomore year, as if he really needed to ask where Ronan’s hostility came from.

Ronan walked down the main drag of shops and restaurants close to campus. He hated this street, just like he hated anything connected to the university, anything connected to this school. A few side streets peeled off away from downtown, and here there were fewer frozen yogurt shops and expensive frat bars. If you kept walking on this road you’d hit the liquor store and then the freeway, and there was a stretch that held some less pretentious bars that Ronan didn’t completely hate. He’d had a perfect fake ID for years, but he’d noticed that the bartenders around here had stopped carding him months ago.

But Ronan was too restless now to sit for very long. He drank enough whiskey to sift the worst miserable chunks out of his thoughts, and then kept moving, walking back towards main street with half a thought in mind to maybe check out one of those fratty sports bars, maybe find some athletes to antagonize. See if he could find someone to fuck up his face.

He didn’t make it to any of the sports bars, because he got distracted by the view through the big front windows of the diner on the corner. Kavinsky was inside, sitting at a booth with a crew of people that all looked vaguely like him: white tank tops, ripped-up jeans, ugly smiles and raw, red nostrils.

It was almost disorienting, seeing a crowd like Kavinsky’s sitting inside a kitschy diner with 50s decor. Kavinsky was wearing white-rimmed sunglasses indoors and tickling the friend to his right with a french fry, his face split in an ugly laugh. One of the other boys was sitting up on top of the booth, occasionally rocking back and forth, jeering down at his compatriots with his foot braced on the table’s edge.

This diner was popular with stoners and club kids, of course. 50s kitsch or not, it was in no way a family establishment, and none of the jaded waitresses batted an eye at a table of rowdy druggies. 

Ronan watched them for long enough to see Kavinsky get bored of harassing his friend with food, instead leaning back with his arms stretched out along the back of the booth (just as he’d stretched his arm behind Ronan’s chair, in the lecture hall). He looked up at the ceiling, head lolling back. He had a long, skinny neck. He didn’t just look bored: he looked checked out, remote, any energy that he’d displayed in previous conversations with Ronan now dulled.

Ronan went to the gutter, where sad slushy lumps of gray snow had built up behind parked cars. He packed up a snowball, making sure to incorporate plenty of grit and grime and bits of gravel. He threw it, as hard as he could, against the window in front of Kavinsky’s table. It made a satisfying thwack, and this the waitresses noticed, a few of them rolling their eyes at him while the one closest to the window pinched the bridge of her nose.

Several of Kavinsky’s friends jumped or startled, and Kavinsky de-lolled his head, looking in the direction of the snowball. His lips parted, his only sign of surprise when he saw who had thrown it. Some of his friends were already sneering at Ronan or flipping him off. Ronan laughed, a big laugh, the momentum of his humor carrying him backward in stumbling steps until he bumped against some car’s side mirror.

Kavinsky leapt up from his seat after just a few buzzed moments of stillness, racing forward. Ronan half-expected him to burst from the diner and really start something, but he stopped at the window, still inside. He pressed his own middle finger deliberately to the glass, grinning with all his teeth. Ronan smirked at him, and Kavinsky changed his gesture, now holding two fingers in a V in front of his mouth with his tongue waggling between them.

Ronan held up his fist and jerked off the air. Kavinsky mimed sucking cock. Each of Ronan’s next few breaths came up a little bit short. 

No one else on the street was taking any notice of them, no one gave a shit about some college boys horsing around, but Ronan still felt keenly aware of being out in the open. In public. He wasn’t sure if he felt negatively or positively about this, just--aware. The only people actually watching them was Kavinsky’s table inside, laughing appreciatively at the spectacle, but in contrast to the rest of the world they were practically invisible to Ronan, he’d forgotten all about them.

After they ran out of obscene gestures to exchange, Kavinsky still stood watching him through the glass, like he was waiting for something. Ronan kind of thought he might invite him to join the table, but he made no such move. Nor did he leave to talk to Ronan outside. 

The waiting made Ronan feel as though he might be sobering up, which he didn’t want. On the glass pane between them, bits of gravel and snow had finished their slide down, puddling on the sill and leaving what could have been slug trails behind. If Kavinsky wanted Ronan to make the next move, he was going to be disappointed. 

Ronan rolled his eyes at Kavinsky, gave a sarcastic wave that turned into one last middle finger before jamming his fists into his coat pockets. As he turned on his heel and Kavinsky’s face left his line of sight, Ronan thought he saw him licking his lips.

***

And then Kavinsky got his number. Ronan had no idea how, from whom. The only person he ever talked to was Gansey. It was impossible, almost a miracle, or whatever you call a miracle when performed by someone like Kavinsky.

_hey shithead,_ Kavinsky’s text conversations would often start, his delight practically radiating off the screen. Or _hey motherfucker_ or _shitweasel_ or once, _ding-dong._ Ronan never felt like he really engaged except to be insulting, yet somehow these text threads got long and convoluted. 

Kavinsky would tell stupid and occasionally horrifying stories about the parade of nervous wealthy kids that kept his business afloat; _they fuckin hate me but they’d rather buy their drugs from another college kid haha._ Sometimes he sent photos of his chemistry lab, simmering beakers and liquids transforming into other more colorful liquids, as if he sensed that Ronan remained skeptical about Kavinsky possessing any academic passion. He also sent selfies with fine white dust scattered on his upper lip or across his cheek, with stupid jokey captions about how he’d just eaten a jelly donut and gotten powdered sugar all over, l m a o. He used a lot of poop emojis. And knife emojis. And bomb emojis.

“Who are you texting?” Gansey asked him once, slightly baffled when he came out of studying in his room to see Ronan sprawled on the couch, thumb swiping across his touchscreen. 

Ronan hated how his shoulders tensed at the question, betraying that he cared. He kept his voice bored, at least. “Kavinsky.”

“Ugh,” Gansey said. “You’ve been talking to him more? I can’t stand that guy.”

Ronan made a noncommittal noise. When he looked up, Gansey was standing with an uncharacteristically uncertain posture--or at least, the uncertainty was not characteristic for how he interacted with Ronan. Something tightened in Ronan’s chest at the suggestion that Gansey might be feeling the same gulf in their friendship, that the perception of distance that made Ronan so unhappy might not be a one-way street. He opened his mouth, felt like he should say something, be reassuring now that he realized there was a need for it, but no words came.

And the moment passed. Gansey looked to the side, slipped his hands into his khaki pockets, relaxed now. “I think he’s the one who starts all the rumors about himself. Pathetic. Maybe it’s good for his business that people think he’s a mobster creep. Anyway. I’m famished, do you want to meet Blue and Adam for dinner with me?”

Perhaps Gansey thought that if he gave Ronan no time to prepare, slipping the request in sideways, the invitation would become innocuous and he’d be tricked into saying yes. The tightness in Ronan’s chest dissolved to ash.

“No,” Ronan said. “I’m too busy sending nudes to my crazy drug dealer boyfriend.”

“Suit yourself,” Gansey said with an eye-roll, and left Ronan to it.

***

_why go to that class if you dont want to, just skip it dude_

Ronan scowled down at his phone. He couldn’t exactly remember the last time he’d gone to his political science class. He’d gone at least once since that time Kavinsky had crashed that lecture, hadn’t he? Probably he had. Maybe.

He didn’t know whether attendance was a significant part of his grade or not, and he couldn’t be bothered to look it up on the syllabus. What little motivation he’d managed to dredge up to not fail his classes in his first semester here had pretty much deserted him by now. 

He was only putting himself through this because Declan had threatened to cut him off if he didn’t get some kind of degree.

_ur being a bad influence_

_wtf am i really?_

_well i can’t be sure. ive never met one of those before. but i think so yeah_

Ronan had fought with Gansey over the weekend about his classes, and how he’d more-or-less stopped going to most of them. 

At least Ronan could stop giving a shit about what Declan wanted when he turned 21 and got his trust fund. There was no natural endpoint for when he would no longer be wrestling with Gansey’s disappointment in him.

_well shit. wouldnt wanna INFLUENCE u. thats your bf’s job_

Lately Kavinsky had taken to making crude jokes about Ronan’s friendship with Gansey. Ronan still had no idea how he and Gansey even knew each other, and at this point he didn’t care to ask. 

Ronan lingered outside his classroom. He still had five minutes before it started. He really didn’t want to go, but the prospect of leaving and heading back to his dorm and staring at the walls there made him just as angry. He wanted to be drunk or, failing that, unconscious. But it was only ten in the morning and Ronan hadn’t been sleeping much lately, whether it was day or night.

_but if ur not gonna go to class anyway i have a suggestion_

Ronan half-expected the suggestion to be raunchy and/or illegal, but it was weirder than that. Kavinsky wanted him to come hang out in his chemistry lab. When Ronan sneered that it didn’t make sense to skip class just to go watch someone else do their homework, Kavinsky just laughed, sent poop emojis, told him where the lab was and stopped responding or reading his texts.

Ronan wasn’t sure if Kavinsksy had stopped texting because he was confident Ronan would come, or because he didn’t care what Ronan did. 

Ronan didn’t want Kavinsky assuming that Ronan would just come when called. But then, why would Kavinsky assume that? He was always asking Ronan to come to things and Ronan usually ignored his invitations. 

He now had two minutes before his class started. Ronan slipped his phone into his pocket and turned on his heel, didn’t think of Gansey, didn’t think of Declan. The chemistry building was across campus, and the February wind bit at his cheeks as he walked.

Ronan had yet to take any lab science classes, and he felt distinctly out of his element in the chem lab. There was only one other student here, a skinny guy with glasses and floppy hair who looked twelve. Ronan would’ve expected him to be intimidated by Kavinsky, but they seemed at ease around each other. Kavinsky was actually pretty friendly towards him, almost like he was a regular guy instead of someone who was liable to get loudly up into the face of any person who happened to be around when he got bored.

It was deeply surreal watching Kavinsky work. Ronan had not believed that Kavinsky had anything remotely resembling a studious side, but he seemed to be paying attention to this assignment, like he cared about getting it right. Ronan found himself conscripted into reading aloud instructions from the textbook while Kavinsky’s hands were occupied. 

“Fuck yeah,” Kavinsky said once there was a fire lit beneath several beakers and some liquids were bubbling while other liquids shimmered. “Now we wait 20 minutes.”

The smile on his face was the same one Ronan had seen after Kavinsky had started that fight at the party, the same one he got when telling stories about what people did after taking his drugs. But right now that smile was directed at a school assignment, which was just surreal even if there was fire involved.

The other student finished cleaning and drying his last beaker and hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder, nodding his goodbyes at Kavinsky and Ronan. Kavinsky gave him a little salute as he left.

“What a model student,” Ronan said. “Your parents must be so proud.” 

Kavinsky turned to him now, chemical reactions mirrored in his interested eyes, and Ronan didn’t know why he’d said that, didn’t know why he’d brought up family when he was incapable of disguising the bitter knife’s-edge of his voice. Now Kavinsky smelled blood in the water.

“Oh, yeah. My parents _love_ chemicals.” Kavinsky was smirking, leaning back on his elbows on the lab table in a way that seemed to put his concave chest out on display. His chemistry assignment was starting to make the air smell strange and sour. 

Ronan’s skin felt slimy at Kavinsky’s implication, and this reaction annoyed him. It made him feel naive. 

“How about you? Doing your rich old man proud with that Latin degree?”

Ronan didn’t know why Kavinsky had guessed that his family was rich, but he didn’t bother to deny it. “My old man’s dead.”

It was a test. Ronan watched Kavinsky sidelong, waiting. He didn’t know what response, exactly, would signify failure, but he knew he was ready to leave if he heard it.

Kavinsky tilted his head and watched Ronan back. Eventually he said, “How’d he die?”

Was it a failure? Ronan felt bile fill his lungs, pressure on his chest from the inside. His right arm gripped his left and he thought about throwing punches, smashing glass. Flammable liquid everywhere. “Someone bashed in his skull in our garage. It was a couple years ago.” Ronan pressed his lips together before he kept stating facts: it was because of Niall’s debt; no one left alive knew what Niall had done to earn the debt; his mother was a shell of herself; he’d been the one to find the body. If Ronan told Kavinsky any more, he’d never want to see him again.

Kavinsky gave a low whistle and Ronan had to turn away, couldn’t look anyone in the eye right now. He braced his hands on the lab table and willed his arms to stop shaking. He was dreading Kavinsky trying to put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder or something--Ronan would have bitten him--but Kavinsky didn’t lift a finger. All he said was, “And now you’re here.”

“And now I’m here,” Ronan said. “Only because of my brother. My dad didn’t care whether or not I got an education.” The pressure in his chest had turned into all these words he wanted to say, which was terrifying. Ronan had never actually talked about any of this to anyone. Gansey already knew everything so there was nothing to tell, and Ronan never spoke to anyone else.

“My dad’s happy enough to pay for it, as long as he doesn’t have to see me,” Kavinsky said, voice so careless he could be talking about the weather. “He just made sure I went far away from New Jersey so that I stopped stealing his customers.”

Ronan snorted. “You’re from fucking Jersey?”

Kavinsky cackled. “You couldn’t tell?” And now he moved, suddenly he was at Ronan’s side and throwing an arm around his shoulders. “I heard you’re from Virginia, you fucking hick.”

Ronan had ceased to be surprised by Kavinsky’s stalkerish tendency of digging up facts on him. “From a _farm_ in Virginia. Still better than Jersey.”

“Take me there,” Kavinsky said. It should have been a reminder that Ronan couldn’t take anyone to the Barns because he couldn’t even visit himself, but Kavinsky was so close that Ronan could feel the request brush against his neck, and every muscle in his stomach tensed. Not in anger.

“If I could,” he said, and had to close his eyes against his own insanity. “If I could take anyone there, you’d be the last on my mind.”

Kavinsky laughed and moved away, and Ronan breathed again.

***

Gansey reacted with less equanimity to the next escalation in Kavinsky's friendship (if you could call it that). 

“Good _heavens._ ”

Ronan snorted. He'd known Gansey for years, yet it never stopped being funny that Gansey’s curses became more Victorian when he was really upset, not less. 

They were in Ronan's room, overlooking the damage on Ronan’s bed. In their shared living room, Kavinsky had left a kiss mark in red lipstick on the coffee table and drawn a red lipstick arrow pointing to Ronan’s door. There was also a fine sprinkling of white powdered sugar. 

Upon Ronan's bed, Kavinsky had collected most of the objects that had previously been strewn around Ronan's perpetually messy room: a couple of textbooks, dirty tank tops, ripped up packaging for something or other. Kavinsky had done his best to distribute the lines of his semen over it all, and had gotten a good bit on Ronan’s pillowcase too.

“This can't be what it looks like,” Gansey said, ever hopeful.

Ronan picked up his pillow and sniffed it experimentally. A symbolic gesture, you could smell the come from the doorway. “It sure is.”

Kavinsky must have left just before Ronan and Gansey arrived back from dinner: the jizz was no longer white or thick-looking but it hadn't yet dried, still gleaming wetly all over everything. How the hell had he timed it? What if they'd come back early to find Kavinsky jerking off--had that been his plan in the first place?

“How did he get in here? This is breaking and entering,” Gansey said.

Ronan didn't much care about that question, and ignored it. “This is a pretty big load. Do you think it's all Kavinsky or did he get his friends to come bust a nut too?”

“You're the one who texts him all day, why don't you ask him.” Gansey's face was in his hands, voice muffled through his fingers.

Ronan frowned. “What emoji do the kids use for jizz these days?”

Gansey looked up from his hands, giving Ronan a beseeching look. “Ronan, how are you not pissed as hell right now?”

It was a reasonable question. Everything made Ronan angry, so you'd think that someone breaking into his dorm room and violating his personal property would make him extra angry. 

But it was just so fucking funny, was the thing.

“I must be growing as a person,” Ronan told him. Gansey groaned.

***

_hey fuckface. couldn't help yourself huh? my dirty laundry turns you on that much?_

_fuck yeah it does_

So that was what people used for a jizz emoji.

***

Gansey wanted to report the incident to their RA, because who knew how Kavinsky had gotten in and it was a security risk for the whole building. Ronan didn't fight him on it, didn't want to be accused of caring about whether or not Kavinsky got in trouble. Instead he tried to broadcast as much boredom and disdain for the idea as he could, and it was anyone’s guess whether this would kill Gansey’s momentum for snitching or not. 

Ronan needed to return Kavinsky’s gesture somehow. He was thinking too much about this. He was thinking too much about Kavinsky, he kept getting angry with himself for thinking about Kavinsky at all. His thoughts kept trying to take shapes that made him angry, that seemed unacceptable. Ronan didn’t want to sit around wanting.

He couldn’t imagine Kavinsky thinking hard about any of the things he did, but that jizz prank had required forethought, planning. If it had been some random impulse that Kavinsky had carried out while high out of his mind, he would have been caught. 

So Kavinsky thought about things. He thought about Ronan, even if Ronan couldn’t picture it. 

The idea that Ronan eventually came up with was going to be tricky, but Ronan felt like now that he’d thought of it, he couldn’t back down and search for something that would be less of an escalation. Nothing in the way Kavinsky had treated him so far indicated that he expected Ronan to be anything less than his truest and most terrible self.

And if this proved that he couldn’t accept Ronan’s worst parts in the end, it was better to know that now than later.

Ronan managed not to get caught by campus security, but it was a close thing. Afterwards his clothes stank and the adrenaline had him shaking. And he had powdered sugar all over himself, white fingerprints smeared on his jacket and shirt and jeans. When he got back to his dorm at 2am, he was too keyed up to sleep. He laid in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling with a wild grin coming and going as he wondered if he’d just ruined everything or assisted with the kickstart of something new and strange.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out. Kavinsky called him the next morning, and Ronan was so surprised to receive an actual telephone call that he almost let it ring through. 

Kavinsky was laughing when Ronan picked up. He laughed and laughed and then said, “You motherfucker, you’re dead,” and kept laughing. 

Ronan wasn’t quite sure what that meant. “Yeah, fuck you too,” he said, and to his horror he could hear his uncertainty in his voice. Uncertainty was the last thing he ever wanted to display, least of all to Kavinsky. He had a class that he was theoretically going to in thirty minutes, but he was still in bed, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling and definitely not holding his breath while he waited for Kavinsky’s full reaction.

“Chem lab is cancelled until they clear out all the trash, but I got to see it before they started the clean-up. Not bad.” 

Ronan heard the smile in Kavinsky’s voice now, and he relaxed a fraction.

“But I did notice that in all that trash from your dorm, there was not one used condom. Tch. Are you and Dick Three not using protection? That seems real risky.”

Was Kavinsky’s obsession with Ronan’s relationship with Gansey just regular whitebread frat boy homophobia, or something else? Ronan was more annoyed with his confusion over the motive than he was with the jokes themselves. “You concerned with my sexual health now?”

Kavinsky’s sigh crackled over the phone, like pinpricks against Ronan’s ear. “Always.”

It was a weird fucking answer when Ronan had just been talking shit. But he felt like he couldn’t back down now. “Stop projecting. Some of us don’t find it difficult to avoid gonorrhea.”

“What makes you think I’m not saving myself for the right man?”

Ronan didn’t know what the script was here: ignore it, say something supportive about Kavinsky more-or-less coming out to him (when in the course of their was-this-even-a-friendship had Ronan ever said anything supportive?), make a crass joke, ask who the right man was? Ronan couldn’t imagine saying anything to acknowledge that he was gay, too. He’d always talked around that whenever he could. 

Maybe Kavinsky already knew.

“Well. Are you?”

There came that sigh again. “Maybe.”

Ronan needed to hang up if he was going to make it to class, especially since he now wanted to jerk off first. “Whatever, you weird motherfucker. I’ve gotta go.”

“Don’t go to class,” Kavinsky said before Ronan could hang up. What the fuck, did he have Ronan’s schedule memorized. “Come get high with me instead.”

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Knew you’d try to push product on me eventually.”

“Just a line or two,” Kavinsky crooned. “If you want me to be your bad influence, you gotta let me be the bad influence.”

Sometimes Kavinsky said unnervingly perceptive things. “I don’t gotta do anything.”

“Sure you don’t, you beautiful free spirit.” Kavinsky laughed again, but it was softer this time. Christ, pretty much every conversation Ronan had had with Kavinsky was weird as hell, but this was weird in a way that was…. Weird.

“I’m going to class. Enjoy your coke,” Ronan said, and ended the call. 

***

Ronan was in a terrible mood, lost in the kind of internal black pitch that was so sticky and bitter he didn’t even know what had started it. There’d been an infuriatingly polite email from one of the family lawyers, he’d snapped at Gansey, he’d gotten bored--any one of these could have been the ignition or a symptom, he didn’t know, his thoughts were just a moebius strip of shit at this point.

It was late, just after midnight on a Sunday, and Ronan had stormed out of the dorm without a jacket after the fight with Gansey. He stood on the corner of the sidewalk, stamping his feet in the cold with gooseflesh rising on his bare forearms. He should go back inside, he didn’t even have his wallet to go stoke his anger at a bar. He wished that he smoked, so that he’d have an excuse to stay out here in the cold for a few minutes, something to do with his hands.

The phone in his pocket buzzed to life, and cold air caught in his lungs.

_yo im bored, are u bored_

Followed seconds later by, _im coming to pick u up_

Ronan’s nostrils flared. It was just one more thing to piss him off, a match struck against the tinder of his skin. _oh fuck you, maybe im busy_

No reply came, and Ronan grit his teeth. This was bullshit. It was bullshit of Kavinsky to assume so much about him, and bullshit that Ronan kept letting him, kept going along with it. He should go back inside. He should make up with Gansey and watch a movie with him or something, or do his god damn homework even, anything other than continue to let Kavinsky think he had Ronan at his beck and call.

He lingered outside, didn’t move, like his feet were glued to the damn pavement. Was it cold enough that he could see his breath, or was he imagining it? 

He heard the sound of an engine, revving closer and closer. When he looked up, a white Mitsubishi was coming towards him, with Kavinsky behind the wheel. There were no car-accessible roads on this part of campus, and the Mitsubishi was too wide for the cobblestone path, its wheels mostly on grass. 

Kavinsky stopped and cut the engine in front of Ronan, and when the passenger window slid down Ronan could make out the bright gleam of Kavinsky’s smiling teeth in the dark interior.

Ronan crossed his arms. “Baby, you try so hard to impress me, it’s embarrassing.”

If the barb landed and stung, Ronan couldn’t tell in this light. Kavinsky’s laugh was hoarse, like he’d been smoking. “You getting in or what?”

Ronan wondered how much of the campus lawn Kavinsky had already ruined, wondered why and how the hell Kavinsky even had a car when he lived on campus. Wondered if campus security were alert to this yet.

He bared his teeth in an answering grin to Kavinsky’s and opened the passenger door, throwing himself into the seat. The car jumped forward as soon as he was inside, and the tires fucking up the campus grass and cobblestones made a truly horrendous noise.

It was somehow more difficult now to remember why it was important to not let Kavinsky think he could do whatever he wanted with Ronan.

“So is tonight some kind of special occasion? I usually see you walking on sidewalks with the rest of us,” Ronan said as the car casually destroyed a ground light in its path.

Kavinsky glanced sidelong at Ronan, his smirk sinuous. “Do you want it to be?”

Ronan willed his face blank and his heartbeat steady. “That depends.”

“On what?”

Ronan had no fucking idea. He hadn’t thought the concept through. He was just trying not to give Kavinsky too much. He rolled the window down even though it invited blasts of cold air inside, and busied himself with fucking with the side mirror.

“I want a drink. Since you’re driving and all.”

“That I can do, darling.” Kavinsky was staring out at the road again when Ronan turned to glare at him. He was just as underdressed for the weather as Ronan was, his knobby shoulders bare and disgustingly pale, but he didn’t complain about the open window.

Somehow, Kavinsky drove all the way across campus without attracting any negative attention from campus security. Ronan would never admit it, but he was surprised that driving a car illegally across the campus lawns and bike paths was just something that could apparently be done, and done easily, gotten away with clean. 

As soon as they were back onto an actual road (they cut across a piece of lawn, sidewalk and curb to get there), Kavinsky turned up his stereo. The music was awful, of course, the same kind of awful music Ronan liked. The bass thumped through his spine. 

On some level Ronan had assumed that Kavinsky would head to one of the bars they both knew, but he blew past all the neighborhoods Ronan was familiar with. Ronan didn’t exactly mind; it had been ages since he’d been in a car going above forty miles an hour, and he wanted to appreciate this. But he was curious about their destination, and a small part of him wondered if Kavinsky ever planned on taking him back.

“There’s a few spots about twenty miles down the highway,” Kavinsky explained eventually. “You heard of the Hoax?”

Ronan shook his head. “I try to avoid learning things about this shit town.”

“You can forget all about this place after tonight, then. I don’t mind introducing you again and again.” Kavinsky’s smile was small and secretive and strange, and it made a certain kind of warmth chase itself all over Ronan’s body: now prickling behind his knees, now in his chest, now at the base of his belly. 

“Sure, whatever.” He felt shy about looking Kavinsky in the eye right now, so he made himself stare at him, pinning his gaze to Kavinsky’s face until Kavinsky glanced away first. 

Kavinsky should be looking at the road anyway. 

Not that Ronan cared. And actually, for once right now he kind of wanted to care; he was flirting with the idea of trying to be a more cautious person. Someone whose fight-or-flight response worked the way it was supposed to.

Because right now all his instincts were telling him that the passenger seat of Kavinsksy’s speeding car was exactly where he belonged, and that couldn’t be right. 

They now drove on a long dark stretch of highway, with no other cars in sight. Kavinsky flicked on his brights and cranked the music up even louder. Billboards and signposts flew past. Eventually Ronan spotted a cluster of lights in the distance, and then they materialized into a gas station, a hotel, some other buildings that had no lights on, and what Ronan figured must be the bar.

Kavinsky turned down the road that lead past these establishments, and parked on the shoulder far enough away that most of the light from this signpost of civilization didn’t touch them. He cut the engine and clicked off his own headlights, and now everything was quiet and dark. Kavinsky made no move to get out.

Ronan could only let the silence stretch out for so long. “Dude. Did you actually want to go inside, or are you just fucking around?”

“Fucking around?” Kavinsky’s hands were in his lap instead of on the steering wheel. Ronan couldn’t read him at all.

“Yeah.” The word had scraped over something in Ronan’s throat on its way out of his mouth. His voice was rough and too low. He was going to give Kavinsky the wrong idea, and he found himself shifting in his seat and rubbing at the hair on the back of his neck, unusually twitchy.

“You know me,” Kavinsky says. “I never fuck around.”

Did Ronan know Kavinsky?

“Oh, yeah. I remember now. You’re saving yourself for the right man.”

Kavinsky laughed, and then he reached out, his fingers falling lightly and casually on Ronan’s knee as if--as if that was something they did. As if it was something they could start doing. 

“It’s getting cold in here,” Ronan said. Didn’t know why he said it. The cold hadn’t bothered him tonight.

“You can get out if you want to.” Now Kavinsky’s hand was curling around Ronan’s back, his long fingertips touching Ronan’s opposite shoulder. When Ronan looked at him, he saw shadows all over Kavinsky’s face.

A voice inside Ronan was telling him, _you know this won’t last, just look at him._ It sounded like Gansey’s voice. It did not, at least, sound anything like Declan; Declan would never lower himself enough to comment on his brother being alone in a car with someone like Kavinsky. 

And now Ronan was angry with himself, because he didn’t even know anyone who was anything like Kavinsky, so what the fuck? Fuck it. Kavinsky always moved in slithers and slides, his hand settling on Ronan’s shoulders like liquid pooling downstream, so Ronan lunged forward like a chemical explosion. His mouth hit Kavinsky’s mouth and his hands were twisted in Kavinsky’s shirt and he heard a sound that must be the back of Kavinsky’s head hitting the car window.

Kavinsky didn’t complain. He pulled Ronan in and stuck his tongue in Ronan’s mouth. The gear shift was between them, digging into Ronan’s side, and he could smell weed smoke clinging to Kavinsky’s skin. He scraped his teeth over Kavinsky’s bottom lip and kissed him again, hungry for it, needing to smash himself into this until he dissolved, because he had no idea what would come after.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Kavinsky was muttering as he dragged his lips over Ronan’s face. His fingernails raked down the back of Ronan’s head, scraping the skin of his neck. Ronan liked that. And he liked it when Kavinsky sucked bruises into the skin over his collarbone. He even liked it when Kavinsky’s fingers cradled his jaw, almost choking him. 

And then Kavinsky’s other hand was reaching for Ronan’s belt, and Ronan had never felt so helpless as he did when his hips bucked up into Kavinsky’s hand before his cock was even fully out. 

“Fuck,” Ronan hissed when Kavinsky touched him. He clutched at Kavinsky’s shoulders, dug his nails in. “You fucking--motherfucker--”

“Sweet talker,” Kavinsky said. He had strong hands, squeezing Ronan’s dick so hard it almost hurt. Ronan was so hot and desperate for it that he didn’t even care about the dry grip, fucked into it anyway, groaned at the drag of skin. 

And then Kavinsky pulled back and ducked his head, and the line of spit from his mouth to his palm gleamed for a second in the what little light they had. It was disgusting, but then Ronan felt a slick palm curling around the underside of his cock and he forgot to be grossed out. 

“Fuck yeah, there you go,” Kavinsky murmured. Ronan’s vision went hazy and then he was focusing on the motion of Kavinsky’s elbow, up and down like a piston as he jerked Ronan off. Kavinsky was so fucking bony and so fucking _white_ , he practically fucking glowed in the dark, and Ronan’s thoughts went everywhere and nowhere and then piled together into nothing as he came. 

Kavinsky stroked him through it and then slowed, then stopped. For a while all movement in the car stilled. Ronan felt warm and slow and honeyed all over.

Then Kavinsky kissed Ronan on the cheek. “Nice stamina,” he said, and Ronan wanted to snarl at him but his cock was still softening and all he had was a mumbled, “fuck you.”

“You know that’s all I want,” Kavinsky said, and Ronan laughed a little.

“Sure,” Ronan said. He came out of his stupor enough to pull Kavinsky in by the neck, skimming his teeth down the jugular, licking the slightly salty hollow of his throat. He managed to get Kavinsky’s pants open without fumbling too badly and embarrassing himself, and then he was touching Kavinsky’s cock. It was leaking at the tip and soft, so soft when Ronan ran his fingers up and down it.

Ronan had never done this before, not with another boy, but he knew Kavinsky, so he knew that it shouldn’t be gentle. He licked his hand and wrapped his fingers deliberately around Kavinsky’s long, skinny dick, giving it hard tugs. Each of Kavinsky’s breaths came hoarser than the last. Ronan could get addicted to this, to the soft heat in his hand and the weight leaning into his shoulders, to every sound Kavinsky made right against his hear. All these sounds were different, so different and so sickeningly good, when he was the one causing them.

When Kavinsky came Ronan felt a perverse jolt of pleasure at the feel of it in his hand, slimy and a little cool, familiar and not at the same time. He wanted to taste it, wanted to swallow it. Maybe if there was a next time, and that next time was anywhere other than this cramped passenger seat.

“Damn, fuck, christ.” Kavinsky’s voice was wrecked, each word choked and meager. His shoulders shook in Ronan’s arms. Ronan closed his eyes, wondered if their heartbeats would sync if they stayed like this long enough.

When he opened his eyes he noticed that the windows had fogged up. It made him think of Titanic, and when he laughed softly Kavinsky knocked his hand against Ronan’s belly, exposed where Kavinsky had pushed his shirt up, sticky where Kavinsky had come on him.

“You and Dickie ever do it in a car?” Kavinsky asked, so spent that he sounded younger than Ronan had ever heard him, ever imagined him being. 

If Ronan hadn't still been thudding pleasantly from his orgasm, maybe he would have blown up. But all his thoughts still felt muzzy, and he could only muster the energy for glaring.

“Cut it the fuck out,” he said. “Those jokes got old ages ago.”

Kavinsky sneered, and the hand resting against Ronan's stomach turned possessive, fingers splayed wide over his ribs. “Dunno, it's still fucking funny to me.”

Ronan shoved him off. He'd seen this side of Kavinsky less and less the more time they'd spent together, and he didn't know why it was coming out now. 

“Asshole. Why’re you so obsessed with me and Gansey?”

Kavinsky slunk low in his seat, his forearm resting on the steering wheel again. Ronan waited, but Kavinsky didn’t answer the question, just kept looking at Ronan through half-closed, indifferent eyes. 

It was starting to get cold in the car again, now that they were no longer touching. Ronan yanked his shirt down to cover his stomach and did up his fly. “Let’s just go.”

“Don’t be like that,” Kavinsky said, and it almost sounded like a plea, but then he turned away, doing up his own fly without looking at Ronan. He stayed frozen for several moments after, one hand on the steering wheel and one on the key in the ignition. 

Ronan looked out the window, because watching Kavinsky made his chest feel tight. It was strange, how quickly everything between them now felt congealed and stale, like they’d so quickly passed any bright or hopeful point. Ronan could dismiss the jokes about Gansey if he knew where they came from, but he didn’t know, and he didn’t know why Kavinsky was being such a dick about it. His confusion made him wonder how much else he didn’t know about this. His confusion made him angry. 

Kavinsky started the car and peeled away onto the road. Ronan waited for him to put the music back on, but they drove in silence. It made Ronan want to open his door and throw himself out of a car that was going 80 mph.

“Are you with him?”

Kavinsky’s question came out of nowhere, and it took Ronan a moment to realize what he must be talking about. He looked over at him, but Kavinsky was staring at the dashboard, where the speedometer needle ticked up and up.

“With Gansey? You mean like…” Ronan shook his head, feeling like he had vertigo. “That’s why all the jokes. You’re afraid that he’s my boyfriend.”

“Afraid.” Kavinsky sneered, but it was empty. He looked so brittle suddenly, like those shadows on his face might grow and split him apart.

“You could have asked me that ages ago instead of being a passive-aggressive dickhead,” Ronan said. “Besides, what the fuck, you think I’d cheat on someone?”

Maybe Kavinsky’s shoulders relaxed a fraction, or maybe it was a trick of the streetlight they flew under. He was still pressing down the accelerator, speeding them forward faster and faster.

“Gansey and I are best friends,” Ronan said, forcing the words out past his doubt of the truth of this. “We’ve never hooked up. It’s not like that.” 

Ronan’s cheeks burned, and he looked down at his knees to avoid looking anywhere else. But he still heard Kavinsky’s long breath out, shaky at first and then just soft, steady.

“I wanna smoke,” Kavinsky said, pulling over again. They were still far from the center of town, and Ronan wondered what time it was. Had to be well past one in the morning, and he felt wide awake. 

Ronan watched Kavinsky roll the joint, humming slightly when he licked the paper. He offered it to Ronan first, and Ronan thought that it made for kind of a shitty apology, considering he didn’t like pot all that much. 

But he found that he didn’t mind, didn’t need a better apology. He wasn’t used to his anger just dissipating like this, like steam. All that was left in its place was the lingering brush of Kavinsky’s fingers as he passed Ronan the joint.

***

They usually fucked at Kavinsky’s dorm, and after that Sunday in the car, they were fucking almost every day. Kavinsky’s roommate always disappeared before Ronan got there, he had yet to so much as meet the guy once, and Ronan didn’t know if it was because the roommate had someone else’s bed to go to or if Kavinsky had made some kind of arrangement with him. 

It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that Kavinsky bribed his roommate with drugs so that his sex life wasn’t interrupted. 

Ronan had never had someone he felt free to want before, and now that he did he found he wanted Kavinsky all the time. It was like some dam on their friendship had broken, and any time they were in the same room Ronan was always reaching for him, always looking at him and getting hard just from the memories, always wanting to slide his hands up beneath Kavinsky’s shirt and press himself close. Kavinsky touched him just as much, his animated fingers skipping all over every inch of Ronan’s body within reach whether they were in bed or walking across campus or standing at a bar. 

And every single one of their text message threads turned dirty now. 

Naturally this was how Gansey found out.

Ronan was often careless with his phone, especially where Gansey was concerned. He couldn’t remember ever caring about Gansey touching his stuff, and in fact sometimes it gave him a weird kind of contented feeling to see Gansey casually using Ronan’s computer or wearing one of Ronan’s hoodies, like there were no boundaries between them.

So the problem didn’t immediately register when Ronan walked out of the bathroom to see that Gansey was holding his phone, and when he saw Ronan he looked up with a bright red face and eyes as round as saucers.

“Oh god, I just needed to check the weather and your phone was closer,” Gansey said, letting the object in question clatter to the table and practically jumping backward.

When Ronan picked up his phone he saw why Gansey had dropped it like it carried an infectious disease. You didn’t even have to unlock the screen (and Gansey had his unlock PIN anyway) to see the detailed message from Kavinsky about just what he wanted Ronan to do to his ass.

Ronan slipped his phone into his pocket, trying to pretend that his own cheeks weren’t burning. “Says it’s gonna rain in a couple hours.”

Gansey was quiet for a while, and Ronan could almost, but not quite, meet his eyes--he stared at a point to the left of Gansey’s shoulder instead. Then Gansey spoke hesitantly.

“When you mentioned sexting with Kavinsky, I really thought you were joking.”

Ronan took a deep breath. “Yeah, well, I was then.”

Gansey’s fingers pulled fretfully at the loose threads of his expensive sweater. “Were you planning to ever tell me?”

This startled Ronan into finally looking Gansey in the eye. He shouldn’t be surprised by this, by Gansey being upset first and foremost by the secrecy. Of course Gansey would care, even if so often lately Ronan feared that he didn’t, that he was loosening his grip, letting walls grow where there had been none before.

“You hate Kavinsksy,” Ronan said.

“Well,” Gansey said, inclining his head in an awkward admission. “Mostly I just don’t _know_ him.”

Ronan laughed. “If you say so.” It filled him with disbelieving wonder, that Gansey would care enough about this to try and downplay his horror at every facet of Kavinsky that he knew of or could guess at. Gansey was always so damn earnest and Ronan always found it so damn lovable. 

“How long do you think… I mean… when did it start?” Gansey asked, his caution and care laid on so thick that they almost prevented him from saying anything comprehensible at all.

Ronan thought of that voice in his head, telling him that nothing with Kavinsky would ever last. Gansey had been about to ask how long Ronan thought it would last, but he’d caught himself, at least. 

“Before Spring Break,” Ronan said. When the weather had still been cold enough to make the front seat of that car freezing when Kavinsky wasn’t touching him. Now the days were longer and he never saw his own breath, not even in the middle of the night. All the finals that Ronan was going to flunk were coming up next week.

“Good lord,” Gansey said. 

“What did you think I was doing all this time? It’s not like I’ve been around much.”

“I thought you were out drinking? I don’t know,” Gansey said. “I’ve been--distracted myself.” Which reminded Ronan of Gansey’s new friends, and he could feel his amusement and goodwill being eaten through by acid, which he didn’t want. Just once, he wanted to be congenial instead of bitter. Wanted the unwelcome changes to his bedrock to feel less like an earthquake and more like a car going too fast over speedbumps.

“Well, now you know,” Ronan said, and Gansey gave him a chagrined smile.

“I’ll be more careful of your phone from now on,” he said, and Ronan smiled back.

A few hours later he walked into Kavinsky’s dorm room like he owned it, and let Kavinsky shove him up against the wall, suck on his neck and press his thigh between Ronan’s legs.

“Fuck, I’ve been thinking about you all day,” Kavinsky said, groaning into Ronan’s skin. “Can I do a line off your ass?” 

Ronan held Kavinsky by the hair and dragged his face up to kiss him on the mouth, biting his lips. “Maybe if you eat me out first.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal.” Kavinsky was already grabbing Ronan’s ass, his fingers curving down between Ronan’s legs, hitching them closer together. 

“And speaking of that, Gansey saw that text you sent me today.”

Kavinsky paused, pulling back just slightly. “Yeah? Did it inspire him to finally propose?”

Ronan snorted. “Please. Now he knows, that’s all.”

Ronan felt it when the tension started to ease out of Kavinsky’s body. He frowned and walked Kavinsky backwards, pushing him down onto the bed, and Kavinsky looked up at him with a face so careless that Ronan almost wondered if he’d imagined the insecurity in his question just seconds ago. 

Maybe Kavinsky also kept thinking that this wouldn’t last, but for different reasons than Ronan. 

Ronan straddled Kavinsky’s legs and Kavinsky’s hands went to his waist, pulling him in close. Ronan grabbed his hand and kissed the palm, then put Kavinsky’s hand over his erection. Kavinsky squeezed him without missing a beat.

“You’re here,” Kavinsky said. “Right here, right here.” He kept mumbling similar things while they rocked against each other. Ronan wondered how high he was, repeating himself with a small smile on his face, secretive and satisfied. 

“I’m here,” Ronan agreed. He ran his fingers through Kavinsky’s uneven, unwashed hair, clenched his fist and pulled his head gently back. Leaned down to kiss beneath his jaw. “I’m right here.”


End file.
